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Suspect Dead, Woman Safe After Abduction At CMU

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MOUNT PLEASANT (WWJ/AP) – Authorities say a man abducted and raped a Central Michigan University student, set a house on fire and was fatally shot miles away by a sheriff’s deputy.

The man was identified as 30-year-old Eric Ramsey of Mount Pleasant.

Isabella County Sheriff Leo Mioduszewski said the woman was abducted around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday outside the university’s Student Activity Center. The woman told police Ramsey forced her into her own vehicle at gunpoint, and made her drive south of the campus. Police said the woman was then taken to a home where she was bound and raped.

Mioduszewski said Ramsey put her back in the car and began driving. He said the woman jumped from the moving car near South Mission and Blanchard Roads, about four miles south of campus, and sought help at a nearby home. The woman allegedly told police she jumped after Ramsey said he was going to kill her.

While she talked to 911, Ramsey poured gasoline and set the house on fire before fleeing the scene.

Police notified other law enforcement agencies of a suspect on the run, along with a description of the woman’s vehicle he was driving. Officers from Otsego County responded, saying the vehicle was located, and that Ramsey had rammed the SUV into a state trooper’s vehicle.

Ramsey then ditched the woman’s vehicle and stole a sanitation truck before driving into Crawford County, more than 70 miles away from the abduction site, where he rammed a sheriff’s deputy’s car head-on, Mioduszewski said.

The deputy driving that car got out and approached the sanitation truck and began firing shots, Mioduszewski said. At least one of those shots fatally hit Ramsey, who was killed around 4 a.m. Thursday. Moments before his death, Ramsey wrote on his Facebook account that he was “about to be shot, peace.”

Police at the mid-Michigan school say they’re continuing to investigate.